Freelance science/technology journalist and author

Scientists have created light a billion times brighter than the Sun

A light one billion times brighter than the surface of the Sun has now been created in a lab, making it the brightest light ever produced on Earth.

The record-breaking laser beam has revealed new properties of light, and it could be used in medical equipment or to create more powerful computer chips.

A group of physicists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln created the light by focusing a laser beam extremely intensely, bombarding a single electron with roughly 1,000 photons during each laser pulse. They then studied the properties of the light as it scattered from the electron.